“If Milan is vandalized, politics is to blame”

From the tags that appeared on the façade of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, to the climbers who climbed the spire of the Duomo in Milan. Milan has been the scene of vandalism and recklessness in recent days, with various politicians calling for harsher punishments for writers. “If a city is vandalized, it’s because of bad governance and bad political examples,” says Alexandro Palombo to AdnKronos, a contemporary pop artist and activist from Salento but Milanese, known for his satirical and brash pop culture writing. , inequality. and human rights – This institution is not suitable for giving specific and culturally appropriate answers. By now, vandalism in Milan is happening 24 hours a day, and the fact of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele is just one more element that has been added to the matter.”

Like Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, the artist shares the fact that “the act of vandalism is a ‘demonstration of deep ignorance'”, but after the removal of his works depicting Angelina Jolie with signs of a mastectomy and Georgia Meloni and Ellie Schlein naked and pregnant on the subject of surrogacy, Palombo is keen to emphasize that the removal “was ‘a show of deep ignorance'” about his artwork. “They were built on wood panels from a construction site in the city center and the municipality ordered them removed, despite the fact that they did not disfigure and gave prestige to the city in the media around the world.”

The artist also recalls when a Simpsons Holocaust commemorative piece created near the Holocaust Memorial was vandalized: “Not a single exhibitor at the Palazzo Marino performed, despite all the world’s media covering it. Even today, foreign journalists ask me why the municipality of Milan censors and removes my works of art.”

In the words of Alexandro Palombo, “You don’t need a center turned into an amusement park for fashion victims and a few small skyscrapers to proclaim Milan as an international city, nor a design fair, nor about fifty fashion shows on the fashion week calendar every 6 months. 20 years ago, with figures in hand, about 120 brands defiled in the calendar of Milanese women’s collections, and today not only 50. Let’s face it and analyze the issue soberly, without propaganda, because the facts say something completely different. story. If the vandals who desecrated the gallery were really French, then this is only an aggravating factor, because it would mean that the image of the “ruined city of Milan” has crossed the borders.

Punishments for writers “are established by the judiciary through the application of laws and the Criminal Code,” the artist notes, “in this case, it seems quite understandable to me, given that since March of last year, punishments for those who denigrate cultural heritage have become tougher, as law 518- clearly states. duodesium. It is understandable that politicians issue their proclamations on topics of this magnitude, since they are a quick and immediate means of getting into the bellies of people, but this is just a factor related to sympathy, which is useless without concrete action by the government.

And he concludes: “The restoration of a damaged or mutilated artistic monument is a duty, a gesture of civilization, because art is a collective memory and must be preserved by any means. art Labels, as in the case of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, which stain and deface walls and monuments, are simply acts of vandalism and have nothing to do with art.”